It's my party and I'll cry if I want to

Last weekend we had Sadie's first birthday party and it was a huge success! Thankfully there was no crying, but there was lots of cake and friends. Though we've only lived in the area for about 2 months, we have been blessed to make some wonderful friends who were able to share the afternoon with us. We took a ton of pictures of the party and I want to post them all but, since we took over a hundred, I should probably be a least a little selective.

Here's the birthday girl in her special party dress, waiting for friends to arrive.

Sadie loved reading her birthday cards. Thank you grandparents and great-grandparents!

We got her this pony riding toy a couple weeks ago for one of her presents. She seems to have figured it out pretty well.

I did some research online and decided to try my hand at decorating a cake for the big event. I've never done anything more extravagant than dumping canned frosting onto a store-bought cake mix, so this was kind of a big deal. It required repeated trips to the store as I kept forgetting things, and then a last minute late-night Walmart run for a frosting tip coupler (the thing that attaches the tip to the bag--I had no idea I even needed one), but eventually I had everything I required to make a fabulous cake. Though a seasoned cake decorator would surely see a bounty of flaws in my work, I'm still pretty proud of what I came up with.

I made a regular sheet cake of yellow cake mix for the bottom, then I made a chocolate devils food cake mix and baked it in a cereal bowl for the body of the ladybug. The head is just a chocolate cupcake covered in black icing. I piped all the grass (which wasn't as tedious as I anticipated---it was actually kind of therapeutic) and piped the spots on the ladybug. I made the buttercream frosting from a recipe I got from my amazing cake-decorating sister-in-law Allison and it was super delicious. I've made buttercream frosting before that didn't taste as good and I think the trick was using real butter. I always just use what I have, which tends to be light margarine, and the difference was significant. No healthy shortcuts when it comes to good frosting. Yum!!

We threw the party with some friends of ours that also just moved to the area and have a boy named Asher, who is 4 days older than Sadie. Once friends arrived we just let the kids all play for a bit before we got out the cake and ice cream and let the birthday babies go to town.

I still can't believe how much Sadie LOVED her cupcake that she got to eat all by herself. The girl devoured the whole thing and then was on a crazy sugar high the rest of the party. Nom nom nom!

Happy birthday to you!

After cake and ice cream I gave Sadie and Asher each a special wrapped present: a box of tissues of their own for them to do with what they will. I promised myself I would let Sadie take out every single tissue and shred each one to her heart's content and I wouldn't mind. She was in heaven.

Really? Is this a trick?? I usually get in trouble for emptying the tissues...

Cousin Rosie came to help finish off the tissues. Such a good helper. :)

We made a bit of a mess...

Overall it was a wonderful birthday party!! We are so grateful to friends and family who traveled from near and far to be with us. Happy birthday to our little Sadie Bug! We love you forever and are so lucky to have you in our lives. May we continue to be blessed with many more birthdays together. <3